Eve's Diary quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which literary form best describes "Eve's Diary"?

   • A fable (a brief animal story ending in a stated moral)
   • Correct answer: A comic diary narrative (a story told in dated entries)
   • A dramatic monologue (one speaker to a silent listener)
   • An epic poem (a long verse tale of heroic deeds)

   Correct. The story is Eve's own journal, broken into dated entries such as SATURDAY and NEXT WEEK SUNDAY, and its innocent narrator makes it comic.

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2. 2

   Question 2. In her first entry, what does Eve feel convinced that she is?

   • A star that slid down out of the sky
   • A guest who must leave the garden soon
   • Correct answer: An experiment in a brand-new world
   • A ruler set over all creatures

   Eve writes that she feels "exactly like an experiment" and decides that is what she is. She later calls the man "the other Experiment," a running joke about the two of them as God's trial runs.

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3. 3

   Question 3. What first makes Eve take a new interest in the man?

   • Seeing him name the dodo before she can
   • Watching him build a shelter in the rain
   • Finding that he brought the moon back
   • Correct answer: Hearing him speak when her clod hits his ear

   When one of her clods hits him "back of the ear, and it used language," Eve hears speech other than her own for the first time. She writes, "When I found it could talk I felt a new interest in it, for I love to talk." The joke is that his 'language' was probably cursing.

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4. 4

   Question 4. When the dodo came along, what did the man think it was?

   • Correct answer: A wildcat
   • A leopard cub
   • An elephant
   • A brontosaurus

   Eve writes, "When the dodo came along he thought it was a wildcat--I saw it in his eye." She quickly names it herself to spare his pride.

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5. 5

   Question 5. In the line "Resting, apparently. But that is a subterfuge: Sunday isn't the day of rest", what does subterfuge mean?

   • Correct answer: A trick used to hide one's real aim
   • A shelter built high up in a tree
   • A sincere and honest explanation
   • A period of needed sleep or rest

   A subterfuge is a trick or excuse that hides what someone is really doing. Eve suspects the man is not resting in the tree at all; he is hiding from her.

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6. 6

   Question 6. What does Eve's reflection in the pool become for her?

   • A rival whose beauty makes her feel jealous
   • A spirit that warns her away from the apples
   • A puzzle she solves by careful experiment
   • Correct answer: A sister who comforts her when lonely

   Eve does not know the white figure in the pool is her own reflection. She calls it "a good friend to me, and my only one; it is my sister," and goes to it when the man ignores her.

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7. 7

   Question 7. Why does Eve decide not to run and tell the man that she has made fire?

   • She fears he will claim the credit for it
   • Correct answer: She expects him to ask what fire is good for
   • She is ashamed of the burn on her finger
   • She thinks the smoke is a spirit chasing her

   Eve reflects that "He would ask what it was good for, and what could I answer?" The man cares about shacks, melons and fruit crops; Eve loves fire because it is beautiful, and that is enough for her.

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8. 8

   Question 8. Eve makes a second maxim, "THE BURNT EXPERIMENT SHUNS THE FIRE," but worries: "though it was so nearly like the first one that I was afraid it was only a plagiarism". What does plagiarism mean?

   • A statement that contradicts an earlier one
   • A bold idea that nobody has had before
   • Correct answer: Copying another's work as if it were new
   • A rule learned through painful experience

   Plagiarism is copying someone's words or ideas and passing them off as new. Eve's fire maxim is nearly the same as her thorn maxim, so she jokes that she has copied herself.

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9. 9

   Question 9. Eve's last theory about the brontosaurus was to use it as what?

   • A plow for melons
   • A shelter from rain
   • Correct answer: A bridge over the river
   • A wall around the camp

   Adam writes that she thought they could "stand in the river and use him for a bridge." The plan failed because the tame beast kept following her ashore like a pet.

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10. 10

    Question 10. In the extract from Adam's diary, how does Adam see Eve?

    • Correct answer: As color-mad and restless, yet beautiful
    • As careless, blaming her for losing the moon
    • As quiet and dull, wishing she would talk more
    • As wise, asking her advice on every choice

    Adam writes that "she is color-mad" and wishes she would "quiet down and keep still," but admits he "recognized that she was beautiful." The extract shows the same events from his side, as in Twain's companion piece, Extracts from Adam's Diary.

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11. 11

    Question 11. After the Fall, what does Eve conclude about why she loves Adam?

    • She loves him because he refused to tell on her
    • Correct answer: Her love simply comes, with no reasons, and needs none
    • She loves him because he is gentle and considerate
    • She loves him chiefly for his brightness and learning

    Eve rules out his brightness, education and chivalry ("He told on me"), and decides this love "is not a product of reasonings and statistics. It just COMES--none knows whence--and cannot explain itself. And doesn't need to."

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12. 12

    Question 12. In the section headed Forty Years Later, what does Eve pray for?

    • That Adam may die first so she can tend his grave
    • That the two of them may return to the Garden
    • That their children may forgive them for the Fall
    • Correct answer: That she may die first if they cannot go together

    Eve prays that they may "pass from this life together," but "if one of us must go first, it is my prayer that it shall be I," because life without him "would not be life."

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13. 13

    Question 13. Eve thinks the moon 'got loose' and tries to knock stars down with a pole. What effect does her innocent misreading of the world create?

    • Suspense, as readers fear the moon is lost for good
    • Correct answer: Humor, since readers know more than the narrator
    • Foreshadowing, as the lost moon predicts the Fall
    • Satire, mocking the scientists of Twain's day

    This is dramatic irony played for comedy: readers know the moon sets and stars are far away, but Eve, newly made, reasons it out from scratch. Her confident mistakes are funny and also touching.

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14. 14

    Question 14. Readers often see Eve as Twain's tribute to whom?

    • His mother, Jane
    • His daughter, Clara
    • His sister, Pamela
    • Correct answer: His wife, Livy

    Twain wrote Eve's Diary the year after his wife, Olivia (Livy) Langdon Clemens, died in 1904. Eve's devoted, curious voice is widely read as his portrait of her.

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15. 15

    Question 15. How does Twain's Eve differ most from the man in the Garden?

    • Correct answer: She names, tests and discovers, while he minds his melons
    • She is idle and lazy, while he works to improve the estate
    • She cares only for food, while he loves flowers and sky
    • She is quiet and shy, while he does all of the talking

    Eve names the animals, runs experiments on water and makes fire, while the man cares for "building shacks" and "thumping the melons." Twain turns the old story around: Eve is the curious, articulate one, not the cause of ruin.

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16. 16

    Question 16. How does the tone of the diary change over the course of the work?

    • From dreamy wonder to bitter, mocking scorn
    • From grim warning to cheerful, carefree comedy
    • Correct answer: From playful comedy to tender, grieving love
    • From angry protest to calm scientific report

    The early entries are comic, as Eve mourns a moon that "got loose." After the Fall the tone grows earnest, and it ends with her prayer to die first and Adam's grief at her grave.

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17. 17

    Question 17. What does Adam mean when he says at Eve's grave, "Wheresoever she was, THERE was Eden."?

    • He found the Garden again and buried her there
    • Her grave lies where Eden once stood
    • Correct answer: Eve, not the Garden, had been his paradise
    • He blames her for every home they were driven from

    Adam realizes that paradise was never just a place; it was life with Eve. The line turns Genesis around: Eve is not the one who lost Eden but the one who was Eden, and Adam says so only when she is gone.

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18. 18

    Question 18. Which of these happen in the story?

    • Eve spends a night nestled among tigers that live on strawberries.

      Happened

      Too tired to get home, she "found some tigers and nestled in among them," and their breath was sweet "because they live on strawberries."

    • Eve finally knocks a star out of the sky with a long pole.

      Didn't happen

      She tried to knock some down with a pole, "but it didn't reach," and she writes that she never got one.

    • Eve throws clods to chase the man away from the pool's fish.

      Happened

      He was trying to catch "the little speckled fishes," and she had to "clod it to make it go up the tree again."

    • The man tells Eve his own name on the day she tells him hers.

      Didn't happen

      He did not care about her name, and she writes only, "If he should tell me his name, I would care."

    • The man puts Eve out of his new shelter and into the rain.

      Happened

      She went to "the new shelter which he has built," and "he put me out in the rain, and it was my first sorrow."

    • The man praises Eve warmly when she shows him her new fire.

      Didn't happen

      He asks a few questions, picks up a coal, puts it down and goes away. Eve writes, "NOTHING interests him."

    • Eve's apples roast in the fire and taste better than raw ones.

      Happened

      She raked out her apples and found them burst open, "but it was not so; they were better than raw ones."

    • Eve tames the brontosaurus to stand in the river as a bridge.

      Didn't happen

      Adam writes that the theory failed: each time she went ashore to cross, the beast "came out and followed her around like a pet mountain."

    • Eve decides water runs uphill at night since the pool never dries.

      Happened

      She knows it runs uphill in the dark "because the pool never goes dry, which it would, of course, if the water didn't come back in the night."

    • Eve's diary describes the day she and Adam are sent from Eden.

      Didn't happen

      The diary skips the Fall. The next section, After the Fall, only looks back: "When I look back, the Garden is a dream to me."

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